When her close friend Dina Hankin was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34, Michele Quiat wanted to help. She cooked the occasional meal and offered other assistance, but felt it wasn’t enough.
“I wanted to do something bigger,” said Quiat, who lives in Lafayette. “I have friends who do the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, and I get hit up all the time for money, but I wanted to give something more than that — something that was really from me.”
Quiat grew up attending Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, and Hankin at Temple Sinai in Oakland. They met at a Camp Swig weekend while in high school and learned that their parents had been friends in college. The girls remained connected during high school through the Reform movement and college.
Quiat described how while receiving chemotherapy treatments Hankin would wear a hat while visiting her. Hankin was sensitive to the fact that Quiat’s daughters might be scared to see her without hair.
“I explained to them that she’s sick and doesn’t have hair because of it,” Quiat said.
Her explanation got her thinking. “I decided I have great hair, and someone could benefit from it,” Quiat said. “And I thought, this is something I can do that’s from me, that makes me think about her.”
Quiat doesn’t remember how she first heard of Locks of Love, but when she saw a television personality donating her hair, she resolved to do it, too.
The Florida-based organization collects hair — a ponytail of at least 10 inches is required — to make wigs for disadvantaged children who have lost their hair because of cancer treatments or alopecia, a disorder that causes hair loss.
Quiat had shoulder-length hair and began to grow it out. She didn’t get so much as a trim for three years. She measured her hair every so often, to chart its progress, and that piqued her daughters’ interest.
A religious school teacher at Temple Sinai, Quiat often talks to her daughters about the same things she teaches her students.
“You don’t have to have a friend who has cancer to do a mitzvah,” Quiat told her daughters.
“I saw this as an opportunity in addition to bringing 25 cents to religious school or emptying out their closets,” she said.
Quiat’s 5-year-old daughter, Megan, had never had her hair cut. She was known for her blonde, curly hair; it was her trademark. But she was inspired by her mother and wanted to do it too. So did her daughter Sarah, 8.
So Quiat found a fancy salon in San Francisco, Gina Khan, which gives free haircuts to those donating their hair to Locks of Love.
While mom and daughters enjoyed their haircuts, 5-year-old Megan was less happy the next day. Her curly hair had been blow-dried and styled, and when she saw herself in the mirror, she thought her trademark curls were gone forever.
Not to worry. After a shower they were back — same as before, only shorter.
Quiat said it’s been great to tell people who notice the dramatic difference that they’ve donated their hair.
And Sarah is already growing hers out again, because she wants to donate it a second time.
“We’re making a point in telling people what we’ve done with our hair,” Quiat said. “It’s a good feeling.”
Locks of Love also received a donation from another Bay Area girl recently. At Eliza Stuber’s bat mitzvah last month, she told those in attendance at Piedmont’s Kehilla Community Synagogue that when she cuts her hair, she would donate it to Locks of Love.
Her bat mitzvah was on a Saturday morning. That same evening, when celebrants returned for her party, most of her hair was gone. She had it cut that afternoon.
“My sister did it a couple years ago, and she donated it — she might have done it twice,” Stuber said.
Stuber, who lives in Albany, said she came up with the idea when looking through a potential photographer’s photo albums. She saw another girl who had done it.
When she arrived at her party that night, some of her friends thought she was wearing a wig. “They were really surprised because they had no idea,” she said.
Keeping the secret was fun, she said, and she may have even inspired another friend of hers.
“She has long hair, and she might do it for her bat mitzvah,” Stuber said.